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Debris cloud

The upper stage was supposed to fly as far as Hawaii and plunge into the ocean 90 minutes into the mission, but it instead exploded above the Caribbean near Turks and Caicos. That said, the vessel, climbing to a maximum height of 92 miles (148 kilometers), did manage to reach suborbital space. The failure of the upper stage so early in the mission is perhaps the most surprising outcome of the test, as SpaceX successfully ran a series of suborbital tests from 2019 to 2021. No reason has been given for the failure, but I’ll be very interested to find out the cause.

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